


Focus and Decay

by Moonlite_drabbles



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Antarctic Empire, Druid!Toby Smith | Tubbo, Healer!Toby Smith | Tubbo, Hurt Technoblade (Video Blogging RPF), Injury, Other, Ram Hybrid Toby Smith | Tubbo, Technoblade is royalty, Toby Smith | Tubbo Has Horns, like physically, the sbi as royals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:21:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29540916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonlite_drabbles/pseuds/Moonlite_drabbles
Summary: Tubbo’s job as a grave druid was not one of glory. He wandered battlefields near his homelands and but the foreigners that fought over his land to rest. Returning plant life to the lands with air heavy with gunpowder and fallen soldiers on both side.One such time, he came across a man, bloody and bruised. Adorning a generals clothing. And, just barely, breathing.
Relationships: Toby Smith | Tubbo & Technoblade, Toby Smith | Tubbo & Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit & Phil Watson, Wilbur Soot & Technoblade & TommyInnit & Phil Watson
Comments: 14
Kudos: 228





	Focus and Decay

Bloody battlefields were never Tubbo’s favorite place. The stench of the young not yet meant to rot drifted through the air. Parts of the field were burnt, grass and wildlife turned to ashes. Each time he was sent out to one, a terrible feeling of grief would wash over him. Better than guilt for not putting them to rest though.

So he pulled his scarf over his nose, and dipped one hand into the small satchel hanging over his shoulder. A mix of grass and wildflower seeds were left scattered across the ground behind him. And as his bare feet touched the earth, they began to unravel and sprout. He also took care to uncork his waterskin and let the springwater seep into the dirt every so often. 

“A couple months,” he whispered, kneeling beside a fallen warrior, bloodied sword still clutched in their hand. Horror stucken eyes still wide, “Just a couple and your gravesite will be beautiful.”

Tubbo slowly reached out and carefully guided the warrior’s lids closed. 

Similar sights stretched across the field. Some dressed in light blue, white symbols of suns worn as badges of honor. Others in dark reds and greens. 

“Oh dear,” Tubbo deflated. Ribbons of worry wrapped around his throat pulled tight. So many corpses. “This will take hours.”

The sky was already dimming, not much, but nature’s simple warning. 

“Not that that’s any of yours’ faults.” he rambled on, scattering the seed around and over the dead. A tradition of sorts. One’s body meant to be returned to the world to feed the next’s cycle upon death. Even if these men were not native, Tubbo thought they might enjoy at least some sort of burial. No families ever sent for the bodies of those left to die on their land.

For the corpses, he let mushrooms grow over their already decomposing bodies. Vines and moss latched onto their armor, wrapping and blooming through the cracks and chips. Nature was always impartial to what it inhabited. A beautiful sight.

He continued. His satchel grew lighter, and the dead put to rest. Until he came across a certain soldier.

This one adorned in heavier armor, wielding a battle axe in lieu of a sword. Long, pink hair drenched in blood and sweat, and a piglin-hybrid face. His limp body leaned against a dead horse. The armor he wore had badges and symbols Tubbo couldn’t understand pinned over the chest sash.

“Were you someone once?” Tubbo asked, setting down his satchel and approaching with care. Curiously tilting his head as he crept closer.

Then, the man drew in a sputtering breath.

“Ahk!” he was still alive. _He was still alive._ “Here!” 

Tubbo dropped to the man’s side, untying the sashes of ropes keeping his armor bound to his body. Searching across the man’s body desperately. 

Several arrow wounds dug into his skin, the arrows themselves seemingly torn out. He pressed his palms against the man’s skin, the emerald’s set into his bracelets lit from their dark green. Flashing and iridescent lime color. Pulsing in tune with the man’s sporadic heartbeat.

“Stay with me. Come on. Please don’t die here. Not here. It’s not a good place to go.” 

Dark ivy crawled up from the ground, reaching up, wrapping over the man’s wounds. The man’s occasional, broken gasps for air slowly replaced with beats of steady breaths. 

Tubbo swallowed, hands hovering over the wounds. He was a grave tender. A Druid meant to deal with the dead. And, gravely, he hoped his touches with them didn’t fuck him over as he tried to save the living.

Vines, crawling and wrapping over the wounds, stopped. Setting in their positions. Honeysuckle flowers blooming. Then, they fell to dust. Tubbo smiled breathlessly as he watched the vines crumble and fall to the ground. 

The man’s heartbeat stayed steady. One minute. Two minutes. Four.

Knees pressed into the dirt, he laughed, “I did it!” 

The pure euphoria rushed through his blood as he laughed stretched his smile to a grin. 

“I did it.” He repeated, quieter.

But now he had a man, easily twice his size, stabilized for now but most definitely passed out. And there was damage he might not have found or been able to deal with. And the fight was days ago so the man hadn’t eaten. Or drank water.

Or drank water.

Tubbo nearly jumped out of his skin, scrambling for his water skin. Only a splash of water left. “Nonono, he could choke, or drown, how-how—ice cubes? No ice in this time of year… just—ughh,”

He tilted the man’s head back. Slowly dripping in bits of water at a time. It was not something he was trained in. But the fight had been declared over two days ago, and who knows how long before that the man had water? Dehydration was not a good way to die. Not when you survived a battle like the one laying around them.

Tubbo sighed as he leaned back. Satisfied. But then there was the issue of getting the man back to his house.

“I could drag you. like, by the braid. It’s a nice braid though. I don’t think you’d appreciate it very much. Huh.” He looked around. No more movement on the field. And his limbs buzzed with magic burnout. “I’ll… I’ll have to come back. With a horse or something! Don’t worry, I won’t leave you here.” 

~~~

Tubbo almost held a touch of spite for the general he led to his house by horseback. For the battlefields he’d seen early in life.

But regardless of any personal opinion, Tubbo carried on. His own house, hidden in the woods on the outskirts of Nada, was downright whimsical. When branches bend to your will and flowers unknowing tilted your way when you walked by, it was hard not to make it beautiful. Weeping willows’ leaves dangled overhead in the canopy, their thick branches forming balconies and ledges where Tubbo hung jars with candles and cuddled up late at night, when visions of corpses and blood haunted his dreams and he elected to not sleep.

Moss overtook rocks, dulling their sharp edges. And mushrooms with strange colors that glowed a dim green when shrouded in darkness lined tree branches and stumps.

Tubbo pulls his mules’ reins, bringing the beast to a stop. The man, laid across the back of the horse, balancing from where Tubbo held onto his arm, was still out cold. 

Dragging him inside was difficult. 

“Sorry, I only have so much space. Not much of a point of many rooms when I’m always outside,” Tubbo rambled as he dashed back and forth, pulling containers from shelves flipping through his recipe books. “Nor do I have much medical expertise—I’m telling you right now, back there? Absolutely luck. But,”

A blue stained glass vial was picked from the shelf. Held carefully in small hands as he came back to the man.

“This is not.”

Two drops. Dark green and shimmery. One on each wrist. As soon as it made contact, it sank into the rough, calloused skin. The man remained still.

Tubbo pulled back, “I really do hope you’re alright. It’d be a shame if you died. Things like you, they don’t die easy.”

Wide eyes lingered on long white scars trailing down his chin. The mask, still securely routed to his face, the skull of a hoglin. The piglike features he caught glimpses of—a heavyset body, thick skin, and hard yellow nails naturally filed flat all solidified the race. Piglin, or half at least.

He didn’t believe the man would be happy with the removal of the mask. But the man was unconscious, which meant Tubbo had legal permission to do anything in the name of medicine! 

Probably. He didn’t pay attention during his apprenticeship lectures.

The skull mask was light. Thick but light. Hoglins were dangerous creatures. Strong and powerful. But little fish compared to the other creatures of the hellscape called the nether. Tubbo met a man who worshiped one of that place’s gods. Not an ounce of magic in his body but a sword in his hand and red in his eyes. Three patrons of the nether and their disciples were not to be messed with. Raw power and no one to keep them in check. Valued on the battlefield.

Tubbo wondered if this one was a disciple as well. Of course, piglin hybrids didn’t equate to that, but there were parallels to be drawn. 

With an air of respect and caution, he placed the mask on the table back next to him 

~~~

“You get out of that bed and I will gut you-”

“Uhhhh,”

“I’m not joking. I’ve killed a man before. I’ll do it again if you mess up my hard work now lemme see that—” Tubbo chastised, reaching for the man’s bandages

“Why am I here?”

“Well, I found you dying on the battlefield. Fixed you up, and brought you back here. I’m a certified grave and nature Druid with healing capabilities, but I was drained when I healed you and couldn’t completely do so. I had to wait overnight before I could.”

The man stared carefully at Tubbo. Eyes calculated and flicking towards every movement. Carefully, he shifted from his half laying down position to sitting. “Was there anyone else?”

“Alive? If there was any left behind after the initial battle they either left or bled out. None I could find on either side. Plenty dead though.”

He nodded slowly.

Tubbo tried not to say anything. The soldiers died. Same way they were supposed to. Passed on and their bodies given to the earth as penance. Some mourned the dead, even if there was little reason to. He had a cemetery in his backyard for just that purpose. 

“I do still need to check you over and heal any other wounds.” Tubbo took a deep breath. “We can do that later or now. But it’s very important we do it soon.” 

Never heal a grieving man, but Tubbo wasn’t keen on burying someone who’s family would never know. And he did that enough yesterday.

“Alright.”

Tubbo nodded, peeling back the bandages securing the man’s chest. He laid a flat palm against it, and began directing his magic through the wound.

The man watched, fascinated as his bracelets centerpieces lit a bright green, same as last time, matching the flow of his blood. 

It swam through his veins, lighting a trail of magic beneath the skin. Searching for anything wrong-

“Dammit!”

“What?” The man yelled back, startled and trying not to flinch away from Tubbo’s fingertips.

“There's arrowheads in your chest because _of course there is,”_ Tubbo tossed down the wipe and stormed over to his drawers. 

The man would have been more at ease if it wasn’t for the downright maniac, tight lipped frustrated smile Tubbo displayed as he opened the drawers and tossed them open. Picking up bottles and holding them up as he tried to read the chicken scratch writing labeling them, before getting annoyed and tossing them back in. “What’s your name?” 

“Blade.”

“Blade.” Tubbo turned to give the man--who was fastening his mask back to his head, unhappy with how exposed he was without it—a disbelieving look. “Oh?”

“Uhhh what’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, “Blade” is something some thirteen year old kid who thinks their cool would name themselves, then get made fun of for.”

“I'm getting bullied by a middle schooler.”

“I’m at least sixteen I’ll have you know,” he tossed another bottle back into the mix and brought out a kit, laying it on the. “Now, I'm not going to give you painkillers, because honestly I cannot tell the difference between those and the hallucinogens, so I will trust in your abilities. But you’re healing around the arrowheads that I assume are in there because someone was stupid enough to tear the arrows out by the shaft and well, that didnt exactly go so right-”

Blade observed the leather kit, organising a variety of instruments used in surgery. Rows of them in different shapes and sizes

Tubbo appeared by his side again, “I’ma be completely honest with you. I've never done this on a living person.”

His patient nearly jumped out of his skin, shuffling back before wincing and crumpling in pain. 

“Yea… but it’ll be fine.”

_“fine???”_

“Yep. Lay down. I have have no official training but I have healing magic so I'm just gonna take them out and then stuff you with magic until you stop dying.”

“How about we, uh, don’t do that.”

“If it gets infected—which it will—the healing magic will boost the infection instead of healing you. My magic helps things decompose and grow naturally. It wants to do what it wants.”

“So there’s no other option.”

“Weeeell there's always death.” Tubbo supplied helpfully. 

“...cut me open.”

Tubbo grinned down at Blade, twirling a scalpel between his fingers, “Let’s go.”

~~~

Blade’s skin knitted back together under Tubbo’s fingertips, pulled closed by thin threads of vines. They looped through the skin and held it tight. 

His patient watched in thinly veiled fascination as the vines then hardened, turning a dead brown then crumpling away, leaving the wounds as scars that looked as if months of healing had passed.

“That went… well.” Tubbo moved back, turning to pick up his supplies and carry them to his water basin. “Unfortunately you’ll keep the scars.”

“Figured. I don’t mind.”

“Yea. Didn’t think you would. I’m glad you’re ok. It’s always sad to bury someone who’s family doesn’t know.”

“...when will I be able to leave?”

Tubbo turned around to find Blade staring at him. Calculated, but unworried. Not by the bloodied instruments he left to soak in the sink. Or by the arrowheads previously embedded in the thick skin of his chest.

“I don’t know. You’re pumped full of healing magic. Even a small infection could kill you in a couple days. Not quite out of the woods yet.”

“Great.” 

Tubbo laughed. Then excused himself and left to his room. 

The walls were dark wood. Like the rest of his house. Only difference was that his room was just a renovated basement. A simple cot and shelves for books and bottles and so many plants. Mushrooms that glowed a dull blue made their home against a rotting piece of wood he kept in a suspiciously large clear glass vase, among some dark green moss and rocks he had been observing a while. 

Tubbo basked in the earthy, damp smell of the underground as he cleaned himself. Wiping days worth of sweat and worry from his skin with a washcloth and water. He left his clothes discarded by his bed. Promising to clean them another time, and just pulled his burgundy robes over his head. 

He took a moment to glance in his mirror as he tied the rope belt around his waist. Looking like a proper follower of 

~~~

“So… what do you like to do for fun?” Tubbo had asked as he sat over his workbench. Tinkering with chains and jewelry. He carefully set a piece of polished diorite into a black pendant. A part time job between burials and giving funeral rights. But a fun one. Focuses were low in supply and high in demand.

“Huh?”

“I mean, you said before you like to fight and train and stuff, but well, I don't want to mess with the healing process too much and… well it’s not too fun to just… sit.”

“I read.”

“Really?” Tubbo perked up, excitedly turning from his work. “What books?”

“War tactics. History. Anything from our library.”

“Oh. You have a library? Is it ‘cause you're a general?” 

“...yea you could say that.”

“Uh, have you ever read mythology? I mean—it’s fine if you haven’t but I’m well, a Druid—you knew that, sorry—but I have a patron and I studied a lot of them. I just have a lot of those types of books I guess.”

Blade stared for a moment, then tilted his head and huffed. “Not really.”

“Would you like to?”

And who was Blade to refuse the excited sparkle in the boy’s eye as he rushed over to his bookshelf. 

~~~

“Now you see, Kelka, that’s my god, is a goddess of like, spring and nature, but!” Tubbo grinned “She god of the dead during winter. And souls themselves only head down to the underworld with fall, as she descends down again. So it’s our job, to send them down ourselves so they don’t have to wait.”

“So she’s a god of death.” Blade asked simply. 

“God of the _dead._ That’s the ones already dead. Only. She doesn't control the die.”

Blade noticed, and to an extent, appreciated the passion in Tubbos voice. The boy obviously had few opportunities to speak about his gods to others. “Huh.” Blade simply said, flipping the pages. Tubbo grinned in response.

~~~

“Why have three war gods?” Techno had asked. Still stationary on the couch, a thick red book laid momentarily on his lap.

“One of my teachers said that war has many different angles and outcomes. Miles is the god of bloodshed and brutality. The bad bits of war. The corruption and people sent to die, and well, a lot of what war is. Sannan is all glory, battle tactics and glory, the people behind it. Dep is why war happens. Territorial and protective of his followers, and what is not his.”

“Why do people love Sannan then? She represents who sends out the orders.”

“I think we should hate her.” Tubbo missed the way the man glanced away. “More than we do. More blame needs to be laid on those who cause the problems, not the people who come with it.”

“What if the people who cause the conflicts think it’s necessary?”

“The most well known myth regarding Dep is a story where he meets a beautiful piglin hybrid and warrior. Her name was Lesa. He named her his own without her offering herself to him. Narcissism allowed him to believe he was entitled to what he did not own. And when she stood up against a chieftain from a separate tribe, looking to win it as his own through sacred combat, he stepped in. Guess what happened.”

“I feel like there’s not a correct answer to that,”

“He stepped in and defeated the chieftain. But the victory was null. The woman hadn’t accepted him as her own as well, and she lost her right to her tribe as she was not the one to defend her home.

“Mother Gaia owns the land. But they want what the land—and the people, who are already there and existing just fine—have to offer. They fight. And the stronger one wins. Does this sound plausible?”

Blade stared, then nodded.

“Then that one becomes more powerful. Power breeds power. One group of people, a government, should not have control over people and places.”

“What if those people have the best interest of everyone?”

“Narcissism.” Tubbo turned back to cutting and hanging long, leafy herbs in front of his windowsill. “Give it a few generations. Let the royalty and the power sink in, and watch as they move further away from it. It’s the nature of the living. We corrupt easily.”

“And what if-what if they aren’t one line. If they aren’t royalty, or aren’t born or raised that way. And they know hardship.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know everything. But I see poison sink into the land. The dead I see on the battlefield are never calm or at rest. A tangle of limbs and screaming and calling out for people.”

“War isn't pretty. It’s the way it is.”

Tubbo turned and looked into Blade’s eyes, a tinge of sadness and pity. “War isn’t necessary either.”

They both turned away from each other. Weight of the conversation is much heavier than a simple exchange of personal views. Though Tubbo may not have known the full significance of it, he swallowed at the heavy air laying between them. Blade set the book on the table and sighed.

~~~

It was mourning time in the palace. Servants walked with lighter steps and closed doors more carefully than usual.

A soft, sad tune drifted out from Prince Wilbur’s chambers. On the bed, he sat, dark hair left uncombed, and a shorter, blond boy leaning against his side.

“When will he be back?” Tommy asked.

“I don’t know.”

“He’s supposed to be back!”

“I know.” Wilbur sighed. He stopped strumming, just for a second, and his eyes flicked down to his wrist. Across the untouched skin of his wrist, the tip of black sword stared back up at him, stretching further up his forearm and out of sight. Hidden by the heavy sleeves of his coat. He didn’t want to see when the mark flickered and blackened, gold marking its hilt fading to a grey. 

His father was doing all he could. Arranging letters and sending for allies. Offering tens of thousands of gold for his son. The territory dispute had been practically abandoned. Threats to tear the Smp to shreds if they dared hold his son in captivity not taken lightly. 

The angel of death was to be feared, after all. 

“Dad’s sending for an oracle. I heard him. Said he’ll help us find him.” “Do you think he’s ok?”

“Of course he’s ok.” Wilbur whispered back. Not quite believing his own voice. “Tommy, Technoblade is strong. Strong and fierce. But between you and me, _he’s really bad at directions.”_

Tommy laughed and batted Wilbur away. “Yea he probably got lost on the way back. Didn’t recognize the trees. Hello, I'm technolost. Hmmmm. These are the wrong trees.”

They smiled at each other, but the laughs turned pathetic and sad as they looked away.

~~~

**Author's Note:**

> Did I ignore my last fic for this? Yes. Yes I did. Do I plan to continue this? Most likely not. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
